Thursday, March 23, 2017

In this post-Trump election world, things have reached a point that almost nothing surprises me. But I have to tell you that to me, the opening of a branch of Little Highness Bao on Wilshire Blvd. in Beverly Hills pushes the envelope more than anything that seems to be happening in Washington DC.

Little Highness Bao is certainly not one of the big culinary names in the San Gabriel Valley. It opened a small storefront last summer in a shopping center on the corner of Colima Road and Fullerton Road in Rowland Heights, where it purveys a very specialized category of buns, essentially steamed mantou buns filled with things like green bean with pork, chicken gravy with pork and onion, cabbage with vermicelli and dried shrimp (with another variety substituting mushroom for the vermicelli), rib with vegetables, and beef steamed buns. Indeed it's the only restaurant I've been to that has this kind of specialty. They also sell dumplings and other related types of fare. Little Highness does appear to be in an expansion mode as they just opened a fishpot restaurant next to the original Rowland Heights store. But it's not like they've created any kind of buzz out in Rowland Heights. So certainly I was totally unprepared when my son Eric sent me a message that one of his foodie scouts had driven by, and even snapped a picture of the new Little Highness Bao location in Beverly Hills

Fortunately I was scheduled to work in Century City the next day, so it was only a slight detour to check out the Beverly Hills location of Little Highness Bao. And there on Wilshire Blvd. between Roxbury and Bedford, directly across from Saks Fifth Avenue (and kitty corner from Neiman Marcus) was Little Highness Bao. However when I walked in I momentarily thought I was in the wrong store because it only seemed to be a boba and tea shop, despite the giant mantou bun picture on the front window. There were no food menus, either permanent, paper, or posted on the wall. The clerk explained that the only menu was in marker on a side glass partition.

The menu is very sparse. As you might be able to see, the menu includes beef noodle soup, wonton soup, pork dumplings, beef steamed dim sum (whatever that is), beef rolls, plus their signature pork and beef steamed mantou buns, as well as pork and beef xiaolongbao. So to their credit they haven't filled their menu with Americanized items, but rather taken the friendliest items from the San Gabriel Valley. Looking at the other tables in the restaurant, the xiaolongbao, not surprisingly, appears to be the most popular item with the local crowd. When I was in the restaurant, all the other diners were non-Asian. I did see a group of Mainlanders,who were apparently walking down the street, stop to take a peek, but then continued on. I suspect they were unimpressed by the Beverly Hills hipster look of the restaurant, as well as the non-Asian servers and customers. However, the food tastes like the Rowland Heights branch, the prices are not outrageous (XLB is $10.99, most everything else is under $9) and the cook with the baseball cap sure looked like a Mainlander to me.

Wednesday, March 8, 2017

As I have written both for Menuism and LA Weekly, one of the most significant trends in Chinese dining in the United States in the past decade is the appearance of authentic Chinese food nearby college campuses all over the country to serve the culinary needs of the 300,000 students from Mainland China studying at our universities. The current generation of international Chinese students is different from past generations due to their wealth, as well as the high likelihood of returning to China when their American university days are over. As a result authentic non-Cantonese Chinese restaurants have popped up everywhere there's a university with any concentration of students from China. Even where two years ago there was a paucity of authentic Chinese options near UCLA, as my LA Weekly article described, suddenly there are a plethora of choices there. But even though the University of Southern California has the second largest enrollment of students from China among American universities, numbering around 5,000, restaurants serving authentic Chinese food for these Mainlanders near campus appeared to be nearly non-existent.

Now it's not like there's never been somewhat authentic Chinese food near the USC campus. Some 30 years ago there was Campus Chinese Restaurant on Vermont Ave. that made a terrific pepper chow mein, but it fell to the 1992 Los Angeles riots. More recently there was Bamboo Express in the University Village mall which served authentic Western Chinese food alongside its Panda Express type items, but which closed down when that shopping center fell to the wrecking ball. Interestingly, the owners then opened up Qin West restaurant in Chinatown and then another branch on Westwood Blvd., bringing the first authentic "Mainland" Chinese food to both Chinatown and the Westside. Then there was the Shan'xi Food Truck that haunted the USC campus that did so well it morphed into the sit down House of Bao restaurant, the second authentic Mainland style Chinese restaurant in Los Angeles Chinatown. However that restaurant folded after just a few months, and I don't know if the truck operation ever came back. Likewise I presume the Bamboo Wheel Shanghai style truck went out of business when the associated Bamboo Creek Restaurant in Monterey Park closed down.

I had heard hints that there were various Chinese food trucks currently parked around the USC campus. However, driving by Jefferson near McClintock by international student housing, I only spotted one Chinese food truck, Tasty Wok and three taco trucks, including trucks named Tacos Guadalajara and Fluffy Tacos. I also drove by the various small shopping centers on Figueroa St., but only saw the places that have been there for many years. Well, the popcorn chicken at A Cup of Joy on Figueroa would have to do for authentic Chinese food, I guess, plus the on campus Asian food court at Fertitta Hall for the non-international students.

Still that answer didn't set well with me, so I turned to the good people at the Food Talk Central message board to ask where USC's Mainland Chinese students went to satisfy their Chinese food needs. And they came through as I hoped. The answer is a two part one. Initially most of the responses indicated that a lot of the Mainland Chinese students at USC live away from campus, in luxury downtown LA apartments, or perhaps in San Gabriel Valley mansions. That would explain the lack of authentic Chinese restaurant options that are otherwise common in campus communities from Champaign IL (which has at least 10 authentic Chinese restaurants for the large contingent of overseas Chinese students), Manhattan KS, Athens (Winterville) GA, Fayetteville, AR and probably hundreds of other university towns across America.

But even if a lot of the Mainland Chinese students left campus at night, they had to eat somewhere during the day. And certainly not all of them lived away from campus. Since today's Mainland Chinese students are much less inclined to widen their culinary horizons than prior generations of foreign students from Hong Kong and Taiwan, where did they get their Mainland food fix? The real answer to the question of where USC's Mainland Chinese students go to get their Chinese food was eventually provided on the Food Talk Central message board by the indubitable food writer Dommy Gonzalez (also known as Dommy!) who lives in the USC area and who explained that what looked like taco trucks parked around Jefferson and McClintock were actually Chinese food trucks that didn't bother to change their names.

So going back on foot to Jefferson and McClintock confirmed that it's all true. All four trucks served Chinese food. The truck that said Tacos Guadelajara when I drove by on the street, said J. C. Foods on the street side and was festooned with Chinese lettering, as were all the trucks. Fluffy Tacos didn't bother giving itself another name and I don't know if G & G Express Foods renamed itself from something else or not.

Each truck had a "menu" in the form of probably 40 to 50 pictures of their dishes that they served, almost exclusively Mainland style dishes, plastered on the side of the truck. Prices were reasonable, with most dishes under $10, some including combos with rice and soup. I was surprised to see an apparent nod to healthier ingredients here in California, as I ordered ground chicken wonton soup from one truck (can't recall seeing that anywhere) and a popcorn chicken roll (similar to the ubiquitous Shandong beef roll) at another. But most of all, it was great to learn that even at USC there are authentic Chinese food options for the Mainland Chinese students at these and other Chinese food trucks in the area.